One week down, three to go. Feels like Mexico City came and went like a flash. Here I was expecting to stay in my bunk bed for a while longer, though I suppose my move to a spacious single is a bit of an upgrade. Although it felt quick, I can’t believe I’m only a quarter of the way through this program so far. I’ve had all kinds of fun experiences and sights to see, and am looking forward to even more of them in San Cristobal.
As someone who had never been to Mexico, I honestly did not know what I was getting in to when I arrived in Mexico City. I had been warned countless times by my parents to be careful, as I apparently could be kidnapped, robbed, or even murdered. I was told by both friends and family alike to keep my backpack on the front, to keep my items in my front pockets only, and to always look around to see if anybody might be getting too close to me. I was also told to never drink anything but bottled water, to stay away from any fruits and vegetables that weren’t extensively cleaned, and to control my food intake as much as possible. That, together with the news and education system referring to Mexicans primarily as “immigrants”, created a pretty clear picture of what I should expect of Mexico and Mexicans in my mind. Mainly, that Mexico is a dirty place, with dangerous people doing whatever they can to get ahead of you. More or less, this was what I looked like before my flight when anticipating my time in Mexico:
However, after just one short week, I can say for sure that my experience with my “single story” has changed. My first full day in Mexico City was primarily spent ambling around the city, trying to see if I could find anything interesting or some good food to eat. At first, I was very wary of my surroundings, making sure not to do anything too “American”, or make myself a target in any way. Once I found that Mexicans quite frankly could not care less about a guy like me, I became much more laid back, and acted as I would pretty much anywhere else.
Walking around Chapultepec Park only reinforced how wrong I was initially. As we walked around, we came across La Fuente de Tlaloc, a giant monument dedicated to Tlaloc, the god of earth fertility and water. This monument showed how dedicated the Aztecs, and then subsequently the Mexicans, were to maintaining a healthy relationship with the earth and its water. While the water in Mexico has decreased sharply in Mexico over the past hundred years, it was to no particular fault of the majority of Mexicans who simply lived there.
La Fuente de Tlaloc, with Tlaloc shown at the bottom of the temple, with his arms holding corn stalks and grains.
Upon going inside, I uncovered even more of a surprise; a large group of schoolchildren learning about Tlaloc and his importance of the Mexico of today. While I shouldn’t have been shocked to see children learning, I was surprised that they went to visit La Fuente de Tlaloc, given how I felt that the deity of earth and water for the Aztecs shouldn’t be very important for the next generation. However, that’s where I was misguided, since for these schoolchildren showing them the importance of water may very well influence them to try and solve an issue that has been plaguing Mexico City for centuries. Mexico City was trying to educate its children about the importance of water, one step at a time.
Schoolchildren (seen in the left corner) learning about Tlaloc, god of earth fertility and water.
The next day, we went to Hacedores, a makerspace in Mexico City. While this was very different from the makerspace at Rice, there was one noticeable difference that didn’t appear in just the physical aspects of Hacedores; while the OEDK is predicated on teaching Rice students to design, Hacedores teaches other schoolchildren how to design, even if they don’t have a makerspace. Hacedores was teaching children the importance of engineering, even if their school didn’t have the facilities to do so themselves. Once again, the level to which the inhabitants of Mexico City go to educate others astounded me. On a personal level, I learned how to weld for the first time, and made a little heart with flashing lights. I also fabricated a miniature robot car to race against others. If I could do all of this in so little time, then I had confidence so too could the hundreds of thousands of children around Mexico City.
The best team (shoutout Sammy and Jordi) and robot (shoutout “I came, iSEED, I conquered”) this side of Mexico City.
On day 3, we went travelling to a farm called Olintlalli. Where we had at first only learned about what it took to have a healthy water system and grow healthy crops, we now got to experience it directly. We learned about how Olintlalli had been passed down through generations, and continued to grow crops using the same techniques they had used for so long. On this particular day, a large amount of weeds were present near a growth of carrots, so it was our job to remove them to ensure the carrots could finish growing well. After about an hour of labor for the 9 of us, we were tired, sweaty, and ready to eat. To think that this was only one step of a 14-step process, and we were already this close to giving up.
A 14-step perceptual map showing the farming process of Olintlalli.
They also showed us how they kept their farm non-invasive. Not only did they not use anti-pesticides, but they also made sure that any and all wildlife previously existing near the farm continued to prosper. In particular, we were shown a natural filtration system that they used to filter the water out to grow their crops. This filtration system had led to tilapias invading on the homeland of some wild axolotls. So, they adapted their filtration system, adding volcanic rock and narrowing the stream to make sure that no tilapias could come through, as well as making sure enough green algae covered the canal so that the axolotls could stay in the shade. They even worked together with a local university to make sure that the axolotls were still doing alright.
Said filtration system, with the filtration occurring on the right, and the filtered, axolotl-canal on the left.
Finally, on our last day of active Mexico City exploration, we went to Isla Urbana, a company founded to provide clean water access to all in Mexico City. Here we learned about the destructive practices that Mexico City currently employs to keep their water level at a necessary level. Between using treatment facilities that corrupt the pure spring water of the lake to sucking water directly out of an aquafer deep under Mexico City, the practices of Mexico City are both not sustainable and not sufficient. So Isla Urbana set out to create a decentralized system of water filtration services, by getting rainwater directly from the sky into a storage container, filtered many times and infused with minerals necessary for human survival. We got to learn firsthand how that filtration system worked, and how they implemented it differently based on off the area was urban or rural, if the designated roof was for a house or larger building, and even how they implemented it to fit within the general culture of the area.
The final step of Isla Urbana’s water filtration system.
So, my perception of Mexico has changed quite a bit since arriving here. Instead of just focusing on the negative stereotypes that Mexicans have endured for so long, I can instead look at Mexico and Mexicans more holistically, and really try and understand how I can best help them. After this week, I now look like this:
Also, here is Wiess/Weiss/Wisse/Wiss/Waiss/Wais?, a cute dog from Olantlalli:
Stunning 😍